tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78964658758236409092019-03-19T14:30:15.820+05:30Kumar's BlogKumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.comBlogger820125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-58682620814595101932019-03-19T14:30:00.000+05:302019-03-19T14:30:15.798+05:30Real world consequences<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><i>Drive a car.</i><br /><i>Play Chess.</i><br /><i>Build a website.</i><br /><i><br /></i>These are all things I haven't done in a long time. Yet, if I were to do them today, I would be reasonably good at it. Enough to hold my own.<br /><br /><i>Speak Spanish.</i><br /><i>Construct a balance sheet.</i><br /><i>Detail the historical achievements of Aurangzeb.</i><br /><i><br /></i>These are all things I haven't done in a long time either. But, if I attempt to do them today, I would be quite poor at it. Nowhere near good enough to hold my own.<br /><br />The difference between the first category and the second is the way I learnt them.<br /><br />For the items in the first category, I had immediate real-world consequences for doing something wrong. When I didn't release the clutch properly, the car jumps and halts, forcing me to do it again. When I make a wrong move in Chess, I lose an important pawn and I lose the game. When I make a mistake while creating a website, it won't work as I expect it to, forcing me to rectify the mistake.<br /><br />For the items in the second category, I didn't have immediate real-world consequences for doing it wrong. I learnt to speak Spanish on Duolingo, which is good to get started with basic vocabulary and grammar, but not to be a fluent speaker. Any mistake I made meant I could always revisit the lesson and try again. I could still get along with my life as though I had done it right the first time. There was no immediate real-world consequence. I learnt to construct a balance sheet from a text book, again with no real world consequences for getting it wrong, except for a few marks lower, which was inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. The same with detailing the historical achievements of Aurangzeb.<br /><br />Thus, in the first category, I really learned. Because of the human brain's inherent ability to prioritize avoiding real world pain. In the second, I learned and soon forgot once there was no need for retaining it. The brain isn't wired to retain things which don't help us avoid real world pain for long.<br /><br />Thus, the best way to learn is by doing. And adding real world consequences to doing it wrongly.<br /><br />If you are learning something, figure out how to introduce real world consequences.&nbsp;</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-89655444409796918772019-03-18T17:26:00.000+05:302019-03-18T17:26:06.038+05:30A faster horse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">"If you ask people what they wanted, they would say a faster horse."<br /><br />This is a saying attributed to Henry Ford, who built the first mass-market motor car.<br /><br />This is used by many people in tech today to stake the claim that they know what the users want better than the users themselves. While such thinking worked in the favour of Steve Jobs and Henry Ford, they were outliers. The statistically successful thing to do is to actually listen to what the users say.<br /><br />That doesn't mean that we need to build them a faster horse instead of a motor car. Of course, people won't ask for a motor car which they have never seen in action before. They will ask for a faster horse because slow horses are what they use everyday and know well.<br /><br />When listening to users, we need to understand what their pain is rather than simply build them what they ask for. When someone tells us what they need is a faster horse, what we need to be hearing is that they find their current mode of transport slow and can use something to speed it up. The solution that they think up for it can be a faster horse. But, the solution you think up for it can be a motor car.<br /><br />At the end of the day, if it solves their problem and speeds up their commute while costing them less than the gains they realize by reducing their commute times, they will buy your solution.<br /><br />Users may not know what they want until they see it. But they do know what problem they have. And a good Product Manager is adept at unearthing it.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-13894620579040368772019-03-17T13:09:00.000+05:302019-03-17T13:09:21.461+05:30Outcomes and systems<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">While setting goals, I always set outcome-oriented goals.<br /><br /><i>Publish a novel.</i><br /><i>Increase my weight by 7 kilos.</i><br /><i>Publish 150 short and 50 long blog posts.</i><br /><i>Pay off my home loan.</i><br /><i><br /></i>Outcome-oriented goals are helpful to clearly visualize the end state. It helps clarify what success looks like. And it makes it very easy to say whether we achieved the goal or not. Moreover, the end state acts as a motivator to keep turning up everyday to do what it takes to get to the goal.<br /><br />But, it doesn't help set up a rhythm, a routine for getting to that end state and realizing that outcome. It doesn't help set the pace for how we ought to make progress.<br /><br />And that is where systems come in.<br /><br />Each of my outcome-oriented goals are of a longer timeframe - at least a year long. However, my micro goals are all systems-oriented and are of a much shorter timeframe - from a day to a week. The systems-oriented micro goals, the counterparts of the above stated outcome-oriented goals, look something like this:<br /><br /><i>Write 500 words a day.</i><br /><i>Stick to the weekly workout and diet plan.</i><br /><i>Publish one short blog post a day.</i><br /><i>Publish one long blog post a week.</i><br /><i>Pay off 3x the EMI amount each month.</i><br /><i><br /></i>This makes it very actionable and easy to plan my day / week.<br /><br />If all I have are my outcome-oriented goals, then I don't have a clue what I should be doing this week to publish a novel. Sitting in mid March, if my goal is to publish a novel by the end of the year, I will have a tendency to relax and procrastinate. I did this a lot in college with my projects where I would not start working on them until the deadline was looming close, and then end up sacrificing on the quality to meet the deadline. Not to mention the added pressure I put myself through to meet the deadlines.<br /><br />However, with systems-oriented micro goals to accompany the outcome-oriented goals, I have a clear picture of what I need to be doing this week in mid March to hit my goal by the end of the year.<br /><br />And at regular intervals, I can modify the systems to focus more or less on any of the individual goals. If I keep up the 500 words a day and find myself ahead of schedule in June, I can reduce it to 300 a day and focus on other goals that I'm behind on.<br /><br />The outcomes and the systems are complementary and I need them both to achieve the goals I set myself.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-20887251708672658892019-03-16T14:22:00.000+05:302019-03-16T14:22:54.183+05:30Why did I set these goals in the first place?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">One of the consequences of setting goals is that we fall behind on them. The theory goes, if we aren't falling behind on some of our goals, we have set very easy goals for ourselves.<br /><br />And when we fall behind on some goals, it can quickly erode our motivation to follow through on trying to achieve those goals. And this is leads to a downward spiral of ensuring we fall further behind on those goals and get further demotivated, until we give up on it altogether.<br /><br />Whenever I catch myself going into such a spiral, I ask myself, 'Why did I set these goals in the first place?'<br /><br />Sometimes, I would have failed to anticipate the work that needs to be done in order to achieve a goal while setting it. Since I set outcome driven goals, like publish a book, hit a certain weight, etc, how I get there doesn't feature at the time of setting the goals. Once I set myself a process for getting to the desired outcome and start acting on it, I realize that the effort needed is a lot higher than what I had been willing to put in. In such cases, I will reassess the outcome and aim for a more practical milestone so that I continue to be motivated and put in the amount of effort I can rather than give up altogether.<br /><br />Other times, I would have set up goals simply due to peer pressure or other extrinsic motivations. And I end up hating the process of getting there, which leaves me in a place of doing something because I want to achieve something that I don't particularly care about but have decided to do as others expect me to be doing something like this. This is actually a very hard realization to arrive at as our minds tend to believe that we really want something that was originally driven by extrinsic motivations. Only when we go several levels deeper asking why we care about achieving this do we realize that our motivations are extrinsic and aren't really aligned with our values. Such times, I give up and put the goal aside.<br /><br />But more often, I end up being reminded of the long term value of pursuing this goal and why I originally decided to go after this, which rekindles my motivation and I kill the downward spiral at the bud.<br /><br />So, while setting goals, be clear on why you want to go after them. As that will play a big role in deciding whether you see it through or not.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-26833972303987093092019-03-13T00:42:00.000+05:302019-03-13T00:42:28.939+05:30The goal post is always moving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It was the epitome of user experience to be able to leave a message when the other person failed to pick up our call, to be able to drive fifty kilometres without charging the electric car again, to have a web page load in under a minute, to have a camera embedded in our phone (however lousy), to be able to read a message on our smartphone notification without opening the app.<br /><br />And yet, today, they are all hygiene or less.<br /><br />When we didn't have those experiences, we would either wish for it or be amazed when we came across a product that enabled it. With time, however, other products catch on and what used to amaze us turns into something commonplace that every product offers. And we begin to crave for the next level of improvements.<br /><br />This is the simple reason why the product economy will always exist. We will always aspire for something more in the things we use and the experiences we have. We will always notice a room for improvement.<br /><br />The same is true in what we want for ourselves. I was recently talking to a friend about The 0.7 Club and was telling her how I'm trying to have the most productive year ever, and she asked me why I see a need to go after more and why I'm not satisfied with what I'm already doing.<br /><br />I have heard this line of argument several times, especially when it comes to money. The whole concept of minimalism is built around this idea of being content with less and not aspiring for more.<br /><br />However, what most people fail to see is that that isn't transferable to all spheres of life. Even the minimalism movement only talks about being content with less material things and money instead of continually aspiring for more. And that is an idea I thoroughly subscribe to.<br /><br />And yet, I seem to contradict myself when I tell people I'm working to make this my most productive year so far.<br /><br />Of course, I see through it and realise there is no contradiction at all. When it comes to my skills, my knowledge and personal growth, I am like most customers with constantly rising expectations. The moment I hit a certain level, I'm itching to go on to the next.<br /><br />Not having this view of always moving goal posts isn't healthy as a life with nothing to aspire to isn't a live worth living. We always aspire for more of something. But it is up to us to decide what that something should be. Whether it should be money and material things or skills and knowledge and personal growth.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-69757470758223446392019-03-12T01:04:00.000+05:302019-03-12T01:04:15.158+05:30Swimming against the current<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Swimming against the current is tough, tiring, and often prevents us from getting where we set out to go. And on the rare occasion that we do manage to get to where we wanted, the effort in overcoming the force of the current may have been too much for it to have been worth it.<br /><br />We face currents all the time. We face opposition to our ideas, to our way of doing things, to what we believe is the right thing to do, to our progress.<br /><br />But to think that we can always overcome the current is egotistic.<br /><br />We let our ego get in the way when we refuse to do our best work because someone we don't like might end up benefiting as a result. We let our ego get in the way when we argue and make a case for others to perceive us differently. We let our ego get in the way when we pass up an opportunity to learn and grow simply because it is being handed to us by someone we don't think are better than us.<br /><br />I have had to work for people that aren't better than me. I've had to let people take credit for my work when they didn't deserve it. I've had to listen to feedback from people that they fail to incorporate in their own conduct.<br /><br />But in each of those occasions, trying to prove that I'm better has been like swimming against the current. Trying to steer things the way I'd like them to be has been like swimming against the current.<br /><br />Unfruitful. Exhausting. Pointless.<br /><br />Instead, when I've let my ego take the back seat in such situations, I've noticed opportunities to learn, to see things from the perspective of the other person, to empathise with their way of thinking, to understand their culture.<br /><br />And it often boils down to culture. Because, if it doesn't, then it can be changed and changed easily. Culture, however, is harder to change.<br /><br />In such cases, rather than swim against the current, it is better to learn to swim with the current and adapt to the culture. Which requires setting aside our ego.<br /><br />If that adaptation requires us to rescind on one of our core principles, then it is better to simply walk away and refuse to swim in those waters. Which again, requires setting aside our ego.<br /><br />Only when both the options fail to be feasible is when we ought to swim against the current. Otherwise, we are just wasting our energy that we could be using somewhere else. After all, the world is quite a big place.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-1691287654606647122019-03-10T16:39:00.001+05:302019-03-10T16:39:45.637+05:30First, decide when to quit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I write often about my weekly routine and how effective it is and have even started a productivity club around it at the start of the year - The 0.7 Club.<br /><br />There are many reasons why this works, but one of the key reasons is the timeframe of decision making and prioritization. By scheduling an hour every Sunday when I'm in a clear state of mind to make good long-term decisions, I ensure that what I want to do at any given hour of the week is not left merely to how I'm feeling at that time when I could be angry, happy, sad, frustrated or dejected. By ensuring that I take decisions on how to spend important hours of my week when I have a clear mind, I'm not allowing my momentary feelings to dominate what I do with my time.<br /><br />As the ultra-marathon runner, Dick Collins, has said, "Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop at drop out. You don’t want to be out there saying, ‘Well gee, my leg hurts, I’m a little dehydrated, I’m sleepy, I’m tired, it’s cold and windy.’ And talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you are probably making a bad decision."<br /><br />And I have experienced this to be true time and again. There are often occasions when I don't particularly feel like writing, or going to the gym, or going to work, or reading that book, and yet, I do it because I have made a prior commitment to myself that I will do it.<br /><br />It is true that the quality of work I churn out isn't great under those circumstances. I write much better and I read and retain a lot faster when I'm in the mood for doing those things. And I write crap and forget everything I read when I force myself to do it simply because I made a prior commitment to do it.<br /><br />Nevertheless, the larger implication is quite different.<br /><br />If I wrote only when I felt like it, the amount I write would reduce, and consequently, the amount of good things I write would reduce, and as a result, I would have progressively fewer occasions when I feel like writing, until it peters out completely.<br /><br />And this is why most people that start off the year with a goal have had their interest in following through petered out by this time of the year (ten weeks in).<br /><br />Only those with a commitment to see it through, aching legs or not, cold wind or not, dehydrated or not, will go on to reach their destination.<br /><br />Do you feel your interests petering out? Have you been staying true to your commitments? If not, decide today under what circumstances you'll quit and then take up (or continue with) any task. And don't quit until those conditions are met. No matter what.<br /><br />(Cross-post from my weekly mail to The 0.7 Club!)</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-34805284667424696902019-03-10T00:23:00.000+05:302019-03-10T00:23:20.053+05:30The path to mastery is boring<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">When I played football for the first time, it was exhilarating. I loved running around, passing the ball, dribbling and trying to score goals. I was terrible at playing then. I couldn't kick the ball such that it went up into the air. Every time I kicked the ball, it would only roll along the ground. My dribbling was no good. I would try to run past someone with the ball, only to lose it. My passes wouldn't reach the person I intended it for and my shots wouldn't be on target.<br /><br />Nonetheless, that first time was a lot of fun.<br /><br />The next few weeks were quite exciting as well. Each day I was out on the ground, I could see that I was getting better. I could pass more accurately, I could shoot more accurately, I could shoot with greater power, I could control the ball better, and my feet began to feel more dexterous. Every day I played, there was visible progress in the quality of my game.<br /><br />Until I plateaued.<br /><br />After that, the excitement levels weren't always high. Sure, when I played games that were closely fought or when I played in tournaments, there was certainly excitement. But the practice I had to go through every day in order to continue to get better and be good enough to play in those tournaments weren't all that exciting.<br /><br />Writing my first story was exciting. But writing five hundred to a thousand words towards a novel everyday wasn't always exciting.<br /><br />Writing my first few blog posts was exciting. But writing every day isn't the most exciting of tasks. Sometimes, it even feels like a chore. And there are definitely occasions when it becomes downright boring.<br /><br />With anything we do, there is excitement when there is visible progress, when we see ourselves level up. But, leveling up is easy and quick in the early days. When starting off with something, we quickly level up through the initial levels until we get to our base level of proficiency in that task. And we thoroughly enjoy doing the task during this time and are excited to see ourselves quickly level up.<br /><br />As we begin to plateau, however, it gets progressively harder to level up. It takes weeks and months of consistent effort to see some form of visible progress. And during this period, we have to persist through the boredom, or at least through the lack of excitement.<br /><br />But if our goal is mastery, or even proficiency, then there is no other option but to persist through the boredom. Because if we are leveling up at a quick rate, we are less than novices that will soon come up against harder challenges.<br /><br />Those who consistently seek excitement won't get far and won't get very good at anything. However, those who embrace the boredom and consistently put in the effort to get incrementally better each day, are boarding the train to mastery.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-11333713661447329012019-03-09T12:28:00.000+05:302019-03-09T12:28:36.137+05:30Product Managers need to tell compelling stories<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A product manager is like the coach of a football team. Only he also has the additional responsibility of making them aware of what tournament they are playing in and what the rules of the game are.<br /><br />Just like a football coach doesn't actually play in the game, the product manager doesn't either. He doesn't write code, he doesn't design prototypes, and he doesn't build data science models. Yet, when the team is underperforming and not delivering on expectations, like the football coach, the product manager is the first to take the responsibility and the blame. And when the team is doing great, then again like in football, it is the team that is at the forefront and not the product manager.<br /><br />Having to work in such a scenario, one of the key skills a product manager needs to have is the ability to influence and motivate people - to get the team to buy into his vision, to get them to understand his philosophy and to execute on it without errors. And one of the key aspects of influencing people is the ability to tell compelling stories.<br /><br />Outside of being a Product Manager, I write blog posts daily, I write fiction (I've published one book and am working on another), and I do stand-up comedy. All of these teach how to influence people. If I have to be good at any of these, I have to be good at telling compelling stories. And the better I get at these, the better stories I can tell my product team to influence them to work on my vision.<br /><br />Here are seven things that I have learnt about telling compelling stories from writing and doing comedy, that I can translate directly to my work in product management:<br /><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>1. Understand the audience</b></h3>While writing, I have to pick metaphors that my audience understand and get. If I start using metaphors from 18th century England, even though that makes for excellent English literature, it doesn't help me get across my point. And when I don't, the audience leaves and I've lost them forever.<br /><br />While doing stand-up comedy, I need to tell jokes about situations and scenarios that the audience I'm performing in front of understand and get. If I'm telling a joke about how southern Italians think northerners are not Italians at a pub in Bangalore, I won't evoke any laughter as nobody will get the context. Instead, if I talk about start-ups and the traffic, I have a much higher probability of doing well.<br /><br />The foremost thing to do as a Product Manager is to have a good sense of what the people I work with are influenced by, and I have to work with a lot of people - engineers, designers, data scientists, other product managers, CEOs, sales people, etc).<br /><br />People come from a variety of backgrounds, hold varying world views, and are motivated by different things. Just like a football coach can't hope to motivate the 18-year old youngster and the 32-year old veteran in the same way, the Product Manager needs to learn to put his point across in a way that every member of the team gets it.<br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">2. Have a core reason for why they should care</h3><div>While understanding the audience is the first part, what it really helps with is identifying and formulating that core reason as to why the audience should care about what I have to say.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Once the motivations of the audience is understood, the story they are told needs to address a core reason that will get them on board. If I have an engineer that cares the most about working on the latest technology, and I'm harping on with a story of how impactful the changes we make could be to the users, I won't get him on board. It will be the equivalent of writing about the arc of a hero to a tech audience. They simply won't care.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story I tell needs to address the core reason of every person of the team.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes, it is hard to stitch together a story that addresses the core reason of every person on the team. And when that is the case, that team is too disjointed to succeed and it is better to structure the team in a different way.&nbsp;</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">3. Have strong credibility</h3><div>If I'm writing about how to evaluate startups for investments, or if I'm telling jokes from the vantage point of a north Indian, even if I say all the right things, they won't resonate with the audience. Because I have given them no reason to believe me or take me seriously. I must make my claims sound credible and the only way to do that is to actually gain the credibility.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I'm working on a technical product, the engineers know way more about it than I do. And I take a back seat and let them run the show on most decisions and guide them in the right direction when it comes to identifying core user needs and taking the product to market.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>While at the same time, I will invest my time in getting to know the technology better and in a deeper way, so that I can make meaningful contributions to the architecture and design discussions.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If I'm unable to do this, I will be like a football manager who never played the game professionally talking about how to deal with the situation of being two goals down at half time in front of the home crowd.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>In order to influence, I need to be perceived as having credibility on the things I'm saying.&nbsp;</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">4. Have strong content</h3><div>If I get all three things right, that's only setting up the platform for being taken seriously. The real test comes with what I have to actually say. With the story I have to tell.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I do all three, but write trivial things on my blog, nobody will read it. If I do all three, but tell lame jokes, nobody will laugh.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Strong content and compelling stories always introduce a perspective that hasn't crossed the audience's mind before. It is something that will make them think. Jerry Seinfeld can talk about answering machines and still be funny because he notices something that the audience hasn't already. He brings in a new perspective.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Without that, the credibility that I have will soon erode and turn into pixie dust. I need to constantly show up with strong content in order to influence the people I work with.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">5. Be humble</h3><div>If I write about how great I am and how everyone should treat me as a role model and follow my ideas, nobody will read it. People don't like a**holes. Instead, if I talk about my vulnerabilities and show that I'm going through the same troubles and issues that my audience is facing, but am trying my best to overcome it, then people can relate to it and are more likely to pay attention to it.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>As a Product Manager, if I go out and act like it is my opinion that should count above everyone else's, then I'd fall out of favour faster than Rahul Gandhi did.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>It is vital to be humble and to hear everyone's perspective. It is all the more essential as the Product Manager has the responsibility to influence, but not the authority.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Ironically, it is humbleness that brings authority.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">6. Show you've got the audience's back</h3><div>If I'm picking on someone in the crowd and making fun of them (which is easier said than done), I should ask for a free drink to be given to them, to show that it is all in good spirit (pun intended). When I'm writing, I always offer to continue the discussion offline with someone who is interested.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Rather than just saying something and walking away, I need to understand their perspective and be willing to see things through with them.</div><b><br /></b>If I've sold my team on a vision and then am not doing enough to get them the support they need in terms of time and resources, then the story will seem superficial and fail to be compelling. Showing them I've got their back is walking the talk.<br /><br />I have to do everything in my power to help them execute on the ideas I'm laying out.<br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">7. Show examples from your past</h3><div>The ace up the sleeve when it comes to influencing people is to show real examples from my past. Once credibility has been established, and all the other points above are taken care of, examples from the past will drive home the point.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I write, I always pick examples from my own life to help corroborate the point I'm trying to make. And when I'm doing comedy, I'm very often the butt of my jokes.</div><div><br /></div><div>And when telling the team a story, when laying out a vision, if I can back it up by saying, 'This is something I've tried in the past and this is how it turned out, and hence I recommend we do this', it is a lot more effective than simply laying out what needs to be done.&nbsp;</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h3><div>It is vital for product managers to tell compelling stories in order to succeed in their jobs. And telling stories is an art. I've deconstructed this into the seven steps above from my own experience.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me know if you have a different way of going about it.</div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />- Show examples from your past - when I write, I always link a personal example from my own life. This adds credibility as well as makes the others think 'if he can do it, we can do it'<br /><br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-5536498153601328212019-03-07T02:54:00.000+05:302019-03-07T02:54:30.114+05:30The alternative to being picked<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Until ten years ago, if you had to publish a book, you had to write it in such a way that it would be picked by all the gatekeepers - the agents, the editors, the publishers, the bookstores, the reviewers. But today, you can write your book, skip all the gatekeepers and publish it yourself.<br /><br />I did this with my first book.<br /><br />But, this is not the same as being published by a big publishing house and being reviewed by the popular newspapers and authors. Whether it is better or worse depends on what your expectations are, but it is definitely not the same.<br /><br />When I go out to pick up a book to read, I am far more likely to buy the book of an author that I have previously heard about and have read something by, or an author who has been recommended to me by someone I trust (either a friend or a review in a popular newspaper), or at least from a major publishing house or a bestseller than I am to pick up a book from an author who is none of the above.<br /><br />When I wrote and published my first book, I was none of the above. To a large population of book buyers.<br /><br />But not to everyone.<br /><br />There were some people that regularly read my work. These are the people that read my daily blog posts, the people who have signed up to my email newsletter, the people who have given me permission to send my writing their way.<br /><br />And these are the people that bought my book.<br /><br />If you want to publish a book, you have two routes. You can pander to the gatekeepers and do what it takes to be picked by them. Because when they publish your book, you will also get access to the goodwill that they have with their audience.<br /><br />Or, you can do it yourself and skip the gatekeepers. While this is easy enough to do, you need to be aware that the audience that you will have access to is the ones who have engaged with your writing before. And the only way to build that audience is to show up everyday and to share your ideas with them and see if it resonates.<br /><br />The alternative to being picked is to show up everyday. Consistently.<br /><br />(Hat-tip to Seth Godin)</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-18345196795371724622019-03-06T01:00:00.000+05:302019-03-06T01:00:21.048+05:30Looking at the mirror through your eyes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Yesterday, I wrote about being caught in the devil's snare. Today, I want to write about the flip-side of it, which is on a much more positive note.<br /><br />The technical term for it is Pygmalion effect. But the definition of Pygmalion effect makes the whole idea sound so transactional. The definition is that when we know that someone expects us to achieve certain goals or perform at a certain level, we actually end up doing it.<br /><br />While this is true at a transactional level for the short-term, I'm far more interested in a similar effect over the longer-term.<br /><br />There is an idiom that goes 'behind every successful man, there stands a woman'. This became popular early in the previous century and then grew to be a cliche and has since fallen in its usage. While this merely meant that successful men had their wives supporting them in achieving their success, a comparable effect continues to exist today and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.<br /><br />When someone we care about really believes in us, thinks of us highly and holds us to a high standard, there is no greater motivation than the desire to prove them right and to live up to their expectations and standards, and there is no greater despair than failing to do so, knowing we could have done better.<br /><br />Find someone that truly believes in you and holds you to a high standard. Every morning, look at the mirror through their eyes. And before you know it, you will be giving your all to meet it.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-90378099655593916262019-03-05T00:17:00.000+05:302019-03-05T00:17:37.217+05:30Caught in the devil's snare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ClutteredLameBear-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ClutteredLameBear-poster.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry, Ron and Hermione get caught in the devil's snare after they go through the trap door under the three-headed dog. The more they struggle to disentangle themselves from the plant, the tighter it coils around them, beginning to suffocate them.<br /><br />The trick to disentangle themselves is, however, to do the opposite that comes to their mind in that state of panic. Rather than struggle harder to escape, they need to lie still and play into the hands (or coils) of the devil's snare until it completely engulfs them momentarily before letting them slip out of the other end.<br /><br />It is not uncommon for us to find ourselves in situations that aren't too dissimilar to getting caught in the devil's snare. Be it at work, be it while dealing with a government official, be it with our acquaintances, we end up in situations where we feel suffocated and have everyone and everything going against us and what we believe to be right.<br /><br />And we struggle and struggle hard in such situations. We fight back and try to make our point and try to voice our opinions and have things turn our way. But the harder we try, the more we tend to antagonise the other party who further stiffen their resolve and come at us even harder.<br /><br />Just like the devil's snare.<br /><br />Instead, we need to do the counter-intuitive thing and calmly accept what comes our way, let it embrace us and engulf us completely, only to then let it spit us out the other end.<br /><br />It will be painful for a while, and it will take incredible resolve to not fight back and smile and stay calm. But that's the only way out.<br /><br />Staying calm and waiting for the turn to tide is harder to do than to fight back. It takes a great deal of patience and courage.<br /><br />But it works.<br /><br />Remember the devil's snare.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-75208640315761556772019-02-27T13:59:00.000+05:302019-02-27T13:59:09.625+05:30Chaining the dragons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/dc/db/9ddcdba320991679fad77c1c32ba09a8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="398" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/dc/db/9ddcdba320991679fad77c1c32ba09a8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br />In the seventh season of Game of Thrones, when Daenerys Targaryen comes to Dragonpit for the big meeting to negotiate a stay of fighting, she mentions how the Dragonpit was originally constructed by her ancestors to house the dragons. She says that the dragons, who are naturally huge and fearsome, grew weaker and smaller when chained and shackled and not allowed to roam free, until they were no longer feared.<br /><br />Our personal traits and characteristics are not too different from these dragons. By nature, they are wild and powerful. If we are allowed to fully express ourselves, our personal characteristics shine bright and come out in full force.<br /><br />However, living in a society means that we need to shackle and chain those characteristics that are not aligned with the culture of our society, of our city or country, of our friends circle, of our relatives and family, of our work place. We have to weaken and control them and perhaps even eliminate them or face the wrath of the rest of the people that contribute to the society, friends circle or work place. We have to weaken and control them or risk being an outcast who isn't accepted and supported.<br /><br />In doing so, we are changing ourselves. By weakening and killing off some aspects of our self, we end up different people than what we started out.<br /><br />This is evolution and this is growth. And it is absolutely necessary that we do this. The only thing we need to ensure is that we are changing for the better.<br /><br />Again, better here is subjective and is heavily determined by the culture of who and where we have associations. Once we associate ourselves with someone or something, we invariably evolve towards the cultural traits that are cherished and tolerated by them. And we invariably kill off those aspects of us that aren't in line with that culture.<br /><br />The simple way of saying this is we are the average of the people we hang out with, or the average of the things (ideas) we consume.<br /><br />Fighting this is futile.<br /><br />Instead, what we have the option to do is to choose our associations, choose our ideas, and choose the culture we want to be a part of.<br /><br />So why not choose something that will help us evolve and grow into something better?</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-32164099652490571682019-02-26T12:47:00.000+05:302019-02-26T12:47:47.015+05:30There are people out there creating these things!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cc/d8/9b/ccd89ba9801b7f1f69e3479d16cc25e8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cc/d8/9b/ccd89ba9801b7f1f69e3479d16cc25e8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />I have always watched TV shows and movies and admired some of them. For a long time, when I watched something good, I would think, "This is such an interesting plot!" or "This is so funny!". But in the recent time, I've instead started to think, "There are people out there creating these things!".<br /><br />I don't think that out of envy. Sure, people that create good shows and movies are very successful. But more importantly, they are among the best in the world when it comes to telling a story. And as a writer of fiction, my aspiration is undoubtedly to be among the best in the world when it comes to telling a story.<br /><br />I have the same reaction when I read good books as well.<br /><br />And when I follow that line of thought a little deeper, the remark turns into interesting questions - What prompted them to create such a plot? How did they realise that introducing this particular scene or dialogue enhances the story so much? Why did they paint the character with these mannerisms and behaviours? How do they get the character traits to be so consistent throughout the story?<br /><br />Of course, there is no way for me to answer these questions correctly. Nonetheless, it leads me to try and reconstruct their thought processes that lead to these depictions in the story.<br /><br />In doing so, I notice areas where the writers have been unable to form strong connections and have introduced flimsy transitions in their plots, I notice areas that leave me amazed at the foresight of a complex plot line. Most importantly, it is what I expect homework to be like if I were in a school studying how to create compelling stories.<br /><br />And every time I do this, I always end up learning something new. Even if it isn't a learning that is proven to work effectively, it is at least a hypothesis of my own that I can put to work in the stories that I tell (write).<br /><br />And this, to me, is the essence of learning something. It is the ability to deconstruct why something is designed the way it is and how that knowledge can be used to design our own things. This is how nearly all Science works.<br /><br />And this is a great way to learn.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-54019494376320330512019-02-25T14:42:00.000+05:302019-02-25T14:42:21.518+05:30Elon Musk is not reading articles online about how to become Elon Musk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blog.adioma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-elon-musk-started-infographic-700x466.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="700" height="426" src="https://blog.adioma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-elon-musk-started-infographic-700x466.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />If you Google 'How to become Elon Musk', you will come across thousands of articles that address that question in one way or another. Either they are answers on Quora to that specific question itself, or they are indirect answers to that question with titles ranging from '10 ways to think like Elon Musk (Forbes)' to '8 things that Elon Musk does before 8am (Medium)'.<br /><br />You can substitute Elon Musk with any successful entrepreneur, author, sports person, actor, CEO, musician, politician, nobel laureate and you will see similar results.<br /><br />The Internet is full of literature on how to do things like, how to think like and how to become any of these successful people.<br /><br />The Internet is full of this literature because it attracts clicks.<br /><br />People love short cuts. They want to learn how to become successful in their field by reading a five hundred word article. They get their dopamine hit by reading such an article and they can go back to wallowing in their mediocrity for a few more days.<br /><br />But Elon Musk is not browsing the Internet and clicking on articles that tell him how to become Elon Musk. Neither is Tim Cook or Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else who is actually successful. They weren't doing this even back when they weren't yet successful.<br /><br />Instead, they were busy shipping their art. They were busy doing things that they thought would make a difference. They were busy pushing themselves to the next level and the next by taking on more challenging work each day.<br /><br />If you <i>really </i>want help and guidance on how to become successful, stop asking how to become Elon Musk and start asking how to become that guy who is just a little bit ahead of you, a little bit better than you. Because that's a map you can follow and act on today.<br /><br />But more importantly, just do the work. Keep pushing yourself to get better than what you were yesterday.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-58170817050681945412019-02-20T16:08:00.000+05:302019-02-20T16:08:36.763+05:30Reacting to what others say about us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">When we're having a bad day at work, we can go take a walk outside and then come back. If we are jaded with our routine, we can take a vacation and get away from our routine for a week or two.<br /><br />But, no matter where we go, we take our thoughts with us. And how we feel about something is influenced heavily by the thoughts in our head. While getting away physically helps to a certain extent, getting away mentally is what will really make the difference.<br /><br />This is the basis of the concept of meditation, which focuses on disassociating ourselves from our thoughts and simply observe them as they float along. As the makers of Headspace say it, it is like sitting on the side of a highway and observing the cars pass by, without getting on the road ourselves, where each car represents a thought in our head.<br /><br />This can be extended to another aspect that influences our mood and as a consequence, our thoughts, which is the things that people say about us. We are constantly in interaction with various people and the things they say to us, their gestures towards us and their actions that concern us are all things that affect the way we feel about ourselves, as well as what occupies our mindspace.<br /><br />It is not uncommon to wonder why someone said the things they did to us, or why someone behaved the way they did towards us and be consumed by it, resulting in a drop in our energy levels and our enthusiasm.<br /><br />What meditation recommends we do with our thoughts is something we ought to learn to do with the things that others say to us (through words, gestures as well as actions) as well. If we observe them come and go and not associate ourselves with them, if we merely observe them from an outsider's perspective rather than put ourselves at the centre of it all and let it consume our thoughts, we exercise greater control over what goes on in our heads.<br /><br />And when we start doing that, we don't have to get away from anything in the first place.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-8385582188459908082019-02-18T20:28:00.000+05:302019-02-18T20:28:32.958+05:30The only way to enhance your will power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">If I've committed to working out every morning, and I wake up only to snooze my alarm and go back to sleep when said morning comes, and I do that a few more times, and then I wake up eventually with no longer enough time left for a work out, I blame myself for not having enough will power to stay true to what I committed to.<br /><br />People go through this all the time. We blame our will power for letting us down when we fail to write as per our schedule, when we fail to pass up that extra slice of dessert, when we fail to wake up on time, etc.<br /><br />Why is it so hard to stick to something that we rationally thought made sense and committed to? Why is it so hard to muster up enough will power to stick to our commitments?<br /><br />Before we answer that, let's explore how will power came into existence in the first place.<br /><br />Hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were still labouring our way into becoming homo sapiens from our ancestors (or perhaps well before that when we were still more primitive animals), we had simple goals of not going hungry, not being killed and not missing out on an opportunity to propagate our genes.<br /><br />Back then, if we came across something that looked like it could be food, we simply went over to it and put it in our mouths without once stopping to think if anyone else (or anything else) was around. Some other animal that saw us and thought of us as food would have noticed this behaviour and came after us and killed us before we could get to the piece of fruit or whatever the object was that had caught our attention.<br /><br />Over the years, the ones that learnt to look around to see if any predator was lurking before walking over to the piece of fruit survived and propagated their genes and instincts while the rest died. And the trait of caution before action was passed on.<br /><br />For a hungry homo sapiens of a hundred thousand years ago, it took will power to not walk over to a piece of fruit unattended and look around to wait and see if there were predators around. And those that showed that will power survived.<br /><br />Many such situations over the course of thousands of years drilled in the importance of long-term value over short-term value into our genes.<br /><br />Today, when we want to not take an action that has high short-term value for us (like eating that extra slice of dessert or staying in bed for half an hour longer), we are unconsciously doing mental math to conclude that the long-term value of passing up on the opportunity and doing what we had originally committed to (like eating healthy or working out first thing in the morning) is lower than the short term value that we are getting.<br /><br />Rather than think of will power as something that we need to exercise to control our impulses and boost our self-discipline, what we instead need to do is convince ourselves of the importance of the long-term value of the actions we are committing to.<br /><br />When we truly internalize that, then our unconscious mental evaluations always result in the actions that are most valuable to us.<br /><br />And that's how we enhance our will power.<br /><br />If it takes stories, if it takes lies, if it takes something else, it doesn't matter. After all, there is ample evidence for stories and lies working well to enhance our will power. Some of the people I've seen with great will power and self discipline have also been firm believers in some religion or god.<br /><br />But we don't have to limit ourselves to religious stories, we can extend that to anything that we end up believing in enough to convince us of the long term value of the actions we commit to.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-78516122886408769852019-02-13T23:22:00.000+05:302019-02-13T23:22:38.803+05:30Make it easier for them to leave<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g0AUhqAIh4E/XGRYqNUfOoI/AAAAAAAAA3U/G8CYd-CD0iYpID6I84qBCUkQdM3dtqLrgCLcBGAs/s1600/mantas-hesthaven-135478-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1145" data-original-width="1600" height="458" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g0AUhqAIh4E/XGRYqNUfOoI/AAAAAAAAA3U/G8CYd-CD0iYpID6I84qBCUkQdM3dtqLrgCLcBGAs/s640/mantas-hesthaven-135478-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />I had to pay four months extra on my TMobile phone bill when I moved from the Netherlands, because my contract stated that I couldn't end it before a specified time period under any circumstances. My rental agreement has a similar clause where I have to pay two months of rent if I want to leave before the end of the contract.<br /><br />This doesn't just happen in contracts. We design products this way as well. If I have to take my posts out of Medium, it is extremely hard. If I have to take my comments out of Medium, it is impossible. If I want to take my contacts out of Facebook, it is impossible. If I want to take my pictures out of Instagram, it is impossible. If I have to delete my Facebook account, it is not at all straightforward.<br /><br />When I had to cancel my subscription for The New Yorker, it was so hard that I found it easier to block my credit card that was paying for it and get a new one instead.<br /><br />And I have a thousand other examples like that.<br /><br />Products are designed such that it is extremely easy to get started, to try the product, to get sucked in. But once inside, it is extremely hard to get out and not come back.<br /><br />As a result, I was a subscriber to The New Yorker for many months even after I had made up my mind and attempted to unsubscribe. And like me, many people are stuck with products that they would have left had it been easier to leave them.<br /><br />This is because everyone optimizes for the conversion funnel which results in the easiest experience possible for someone to try a product. And everyone optimizes for retaining their users and their customers, which results in the hardest experience for someone that decides to leave.<br /><br />What if we start treating the users like we'd treat our friends? What if we made it easier for them to leave when they decide to? Would we build our products differently?<br /><br />I think we would, as we would have to then provide a lot more value for the users to keep them as our users when the option to leave is an easy one.<br /><br />We'd start paying more attention. And we'd build better products.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-10633095563267602042019-02-13T01:17:00.000+05:302019-02-13T01:17:21.466+05:30Copy generously<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Humans didn't evolve from apes overnight. In fact, no species ever evolved from another overnight. One individual of a species had a slight deviance (mutation) from it's parents while copying over genes. And when such a mutation helped it to survive longer or mate with a higher probability, the mutation was passed on to it's offspring. Which then had a slight mutation in the process. And so on and so on until one fine day, the offspring was so different from the offspring in a different line that didn't undergo these mutations that they could no longer mate with each other, even though their ancestors could be traced back to the same species.<br /><br />These are now two different species.<br /><br />Ideas aren't that different.<br /><br />The first fictional story I wrote was a blatant rip-off of Dragonball Z. The first jokes I wrote were blatant rip-offs of Jerry Seinfeld's standup acts. The first blog posts I wrote were blatant rip-offs of the popular bloggers I used to (and still do) read.<br /><br />Naturally, that story never made it into a full-fledged novel. Those first jokes never made it into my act. Those first blog posts were barely read by anyone.<br /><br />Because they weren't a species in their own right yet. They were merely the first mutations. And just like there wouldn't be a new species without the first mutations, I wouldn't have been writing regularly, publishing books and doing standup comedy if it weren't for these initial copied efforts.<br /><br />Each time I wrote, my work, my ideas, my style and my approach underwent slight mutations until one fine day, they could stand on their own as individual works of art.<br /><br />Most people never create anything because they feel that they have to create something completely original, one that stands on it's own, the first time they do it. While that is possible, it is incredibly hard.<br /><br />Instead, our ideas and our work ought to evolve naturally until they are ready to stand on their own. And this happens when we undertake the act of creation, even if we are only copying somebody else's work with slight changes here and there.<br /><br />The goal is not to pass off somebody else's work as our own. In the age of Google, that can quickly fall flat and tarnish our reputation. Instead, it is to give ourselves the permission to copy with the intention of learning and getting better, with the intention of creating regularly and activating our idea muscles.<br /><br />Copy generously. Ship art.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-2825987068994975282019-02-12T23:27:00.000+05:302019-02-12T23:27:41.710+05:30A position of abundance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Why is it that people in some geographies (like Western Europe) were able to advance technologically while people in other geographies (like Australia) failed to do so and remained in the stone ages and hunter gatherer societies?<br /><br />This is the question that Jared Diamond starts his famous book, 'Guns Germs &amp; Steel' with.<br /><br />One of the arguments that he uses to explain this observation, which Yuval Noah Harari also does in his 'Sapiens', revolves around domestication of animals and agriculture.<br /><br />The idea they both put out is that once some people began investing in farming and domestication of animals, they were able to produce food vastly greater than what was needed for those producing them. This allowed for the evolution of chiefs, landlords, governments, bureaucracies and most importantly, armies and explorers.<br /><br />These people could travel farther and farther without having to worry about growing their own food and conquer more productive lands. And in order to do that, they needed to invent tools to overcome people that already lived on those lands and they needed to invent tools to carry food and equipment over those distances, tools to fight better with less men, boats to explore the seas and so on.<br /><br />This is one of the most important lessons from history that we can apply in our own lives.<br /><br />If all our thoughts are occupied in identifying what we ought to do next, what we ought to do to earn the next pay check, what we ought to do to buy the next shiny thing or the next fancy vacation or eat at the new gourmet restaurant, we are not operating from a position of abundance.<br /><br />When we are grateful for and satisfied with everything that we have, like the societies that could feed themselves through easy farming, we start to operate from a position of abundance. And we can spend the excess brain capacity on excelling at our creative pursuits and in exploring new ideas that we would otherwise not pursue.<br /><br />Contrary as it may seem, the trick to operating from a position of abundance is not to acquire more and more, but to need less and less.&nbsp;</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-64420334257442819712019-02-05T14:45:00.000+05:302019-02-05T14:45:46.129+05:30The theory of limited resources<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I read 45 books last year. That's my highest ever in a year (although I'm optimistic about beating it this year). At that pace, I will read about 3000 books in my lifetime.<br /><br />Last year alone, there were over 3 million books published. And the number is only growing by the year. This means that I can only ever read about 0.001% of the books that are ever published. That's one in a hundred thousand.<br /><br />If I have to be an expert at any skill - programming in Go, designing scalable data warehouses, doing stand-up comedy, building spaceships, writing fiction, building Internet products, playing football - it takes five to fifteen years of dedicated effort. And there are over a million such things that I could choose to be an expert in.<br /><br />The limited resource here, of course, is time. At least that's what it feels like at the surface of it. But, in reality, it isn't time. Because if all of us had the ability to live for ten thousand years, then the creation rates go up proportionally and what we can consume in the ten thousand years that we live for will still be around the same (in relation to the total that is created) as it is today.<br /><br />This makes me realise the importance of choice. What books I choose to read, what skills I choose to invest in getting better at, what people I spend my time with, what products I use, what places I travel to, etc.<br /><br />Because every time I'm choosing something, I'm <i>not choosing</i>&nbsp;a hundred thousand other things.<br /><br />Since time isn't the real constraint, it is not about figuring out how to do more in the same time. Instead, it is about choosing the things to do with my time that I find value in, things that bring me joy, things that help me learn, things that push me to get better, things that help me realise and extend my potential.<br /><br />This is the theory of limited resources.<br /><br />It is about making choices with the understanding that every choice that we make is a choice against doing a hundred thousand other things. So, is the choice we are making really worth it?</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-35445728765633601812019-02-05T14:12:00.000+05:302019-02-05T14:12:46.003+05:30Why I read some books a second (or a third) time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">While performing standup comedy, understanding who's in the audience is really critical for a successful show. Jokes about European politics won't do well in India. And jokes about Tinder won't do well with an audience where the median age is over forty.<br /><br />The jokes need to be tailored to who's in the audience and what they can relate to in order to elicit laughs from them.<br /><br />For a long time, I used to think that re-watching movies or re-reading books are merely nostalgia, and that people did it only to re-live the moments and experiences that they had had while reading or watching it the first time.<br /><br />While this is true in some cases, I had completely missed out on another case. A more pertinent one at that.<br /><br />Just like the jokes in a comic act will be perceived differently by different audiences, we perceive the stories we read and watch differently depending on when we read it.<br /><br />I'm currently reading The 5am Club by Robin Sharma, and I would have perceived it very differently from how I'm perceiving it now, had I read it ten years ago. And it is quite likely that I will perceive it altogether differently if I read it again ten years from now.<br /><br />This is owing to the fact that I am not the same person that I was ten years ago and I won't be the same person that I am now ten years from now.<br /><br />We grow, we learn, we change and we evolve over time. And as we do that, we perceive what we consume differently.<br /><br />Of course, this doesn't mean that we need to consume everything again every few years in order to have new experiences and new learnings. Because, part of our evolution is that we modify our memories and learnings to account for the changes that we go through in our thinking and in our perspectives over time.<br /><br />While I learnt a good deal and was inspired a lot after reading Peter Thiel's Zero to One a few years ago, those learnings and inspiration are modified today to account for how I've evolved over the past few years since I first read that book.<br /><br />But a re-reading is merited when we have acquired new skills, new perspectives and new ideas that would allow us to have new learnings and new moments of inspiration when we read something that we have read before.<br /><br />I keep a history of my ratings and reviews of the books I read (as rated and reviewed right after I've read them), so that I can look back and see if any rating or review makes me think, "Really? Is this what I felt after reading this book? Perhaps I should read it again."<br /><br />When I feel that way about a book, that's when I choose to read it again.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-62673981420545056772019-01-29T14:36:00.000+05:302019-01-29T14:36:57.858+05:30Hard choices<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Something is a hard choice when we know the probabilistic long-term benefits of following through on an action and the immediate gain (usually a dopamine hit) of a different action and have to choose between one or the other.<br /><br />It is a hard choice because there is only one right answer and we know which one it is and yet we struggle with making up our mind to ignore or disregard the other choice. Like when we have to decide between focusing on writing that blog post or checking what's new on Instagram. Or like when we have to choose whether to order that salad or a bowl of fries.<br /><br />When faced with a hard choice, we tend to evaluate in exceptions. Would it <i>really </i>hurt my long term benefits if I just choose the easier option <i>this one time?</i><br /><br />When we're looking to see whether the current case can be an exception, then we are opening up a can of worms. Every consequent situation when we are faced with a similar conundrum, we tend to make a choice based on precedent.<br /><br /><i>I chose the easier option that day and I haven't noticed anything negative yet, so maybe it's alright to choose it again.&nbsp;</i><br /><i><br /></i>And we enter a downward spiral that will lead us astray and unable to recover meaningfully. And if we are able to, it would have taken away precious time for the recovery.<br /><br />A no exception policy helps in always making the right choice when we are faced with hard choices.<br /><br />There are two ways to follow a no exception policy. The first is to not allow any exceptions on specific tasks or behaviours. For example, you could decide that you will never wake up later than 6:30am (whether you sleep at 10 in the night or 4 in the morning). Or that you will never eat meat.<br /><br />I personally prefer a different approach where I don't define my no exception policies on specific actions, because I'm not too particular about specific actions and have experienced that different circumstances demand different actions and behaviours.<br /><br />Instead, I define my no exception policy in terms of priority, where I decide that under no exception will I work on a lower priority task when I have a higher priority task that needs my input or time. And I am rigorous in prioritizing the things that benefit me in the longer than in the more immediate term. Well, at least, I'm trying to always be like that.<br /><br />And it makes hard choices easy.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-553838530726250572019-01-28T14:37:00.000+05:302019-01-28T14:37:23.864+05:30The context of the review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Whenever a friend recommends a restaurant or a book to me, I end up acting on it a lot more often than I would when I see an ad for the same book or restaurant. And somewhere in between these two lies the reviews that I get by people I don't know (the ones I can read on Amazon or Zomato).<br /><br />This is simply because of the context associated with the review or the recommendation. When I look at an ad, I perceive that the objective is to make a sale and not cater to what I might like, so the trust is the lowest. When I read a review of someone I do not know, then the trust is better than when looking at an ad as this person has no vested interest in me trying out the product. But at the same time, I do not have the context of who this person is, what their likes are, how they consume certain things and whether my reaction to the product would be the same. However, when the rating or recommendation comes from a friend, I have all of that context, which makes it very easy to extrapolate how I would react to the product and whether it would be a good fit for me.<br /><br />This is a problem that most non-commodity products are trying to solve and are doing it in different ways. While on Play Store, the reviews are grouped by key words to indicate how many people said a certain thing about the app, sites like Booking and Airbnb tend to show reviews from people from the user's country or city higher than the reviews left by others.<br /><br />However, on more nuanced topics of the behaviour of people towards us, we tend to ignore this context.<br /><br />When someone at work is trying to claim credit for our work or argue against our ideas in a meeting or are taking longer than expected to deliver something, we assume certain intent that may be coming out of generalizations equivalent to reading the review from a person we don't know. Because we don't always put ourselves in the shoes of the other person to understand the reason and the context behind their actions.<br /><br />When we invest the time to understand the context, then we would be more accurate in the action we take as a consequence.<br /><br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7896465875823640909.post-34398820122708639472019-01-26T17:07:00.000+05:302019-01-26T17:07:35.239+05:30What's stopping me from doing it right now?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">This has been the most powerful question for me to answer, and one I have started to ask myself every time I hear myself planning to do something in the future - like wanting to travel the world, or wanting to live on a Mediterranean island or on a Japanese village on a hill.<br /><br />In everything I do, answering this one question clears up so many things and helps arrive at a concrete action that I can take right now. Or it makes me realize that the reason I have in my mind for wanting to do something isn't the real reason at all and that there is something else instead that is motivating me to do it, which helps me unblock things on that side, which I otherwise would never have thought about.<br /><br />And when I begin answering this question, the only acceptable reason that comes out is that I'm doing some other things that are more important to me right now and don't have the time or energy to spare.<br /><br />All other reasons only result in other actions that I can take today to not have them as reasons. If it turns out that I don't have enough money today, then I have an action to increase my income which I can then invest in figuring out how. If it turns out that I don't have the right skills, I can then invest in acquiring those skills. If it turns out that I'm not in the right location, then I can invest in getting to the right location. And so on.<br /><br />However, the common thing to do is to let time take its course and then hope that what are blocking reasons today won't be so in the future. That is like expecting to get different results by doing the same thing over and over even when we have already seen that doing it this way fails.<br /><br />It can also happen that we notice the reality of what it takes to get to where we want and we can then determine that it isn't worth investing the effort in getting there and change our goal altogether.<br /><br />No matter what the outcome, this has undoubtedly been the most powerful question to ask myself. Perhaps you should start answering it too.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9933378-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script></div>Kumara S Raghavendrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17568134898095600366noreply@blogger.com0